


See You Through

by treaddelicately



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Family Feels, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-13 21:27:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29408367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/treaddelicately/pseuds/treaddelicately
Summary: Daisy doesn't quite know how to bond with her newly-found sister, but Daniel has some gentle words of encouragement for her.
Relationships: Skye | Daisy Johnson/Daniel Sousa
Comments: 20
Kudos: 46





	See You Through

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Quakerider Writer's Guild 2021 Valentine's Day Challenge! The prompt/flower given to me was **goldenrod** , symbolizing encouragement or good fortune.
> 
> Thank you as always to the incredible @myracingthoughts for beta'ing for me and for always being a source of encouragement when I need it.

There were plenty of things that had changed about Daisy over the years.

Her name, for one. The paranoid hacker persona she’d shed around the time she’d become a bona fide S.H.I.E.L.D agent. Her hair had changed plenty, and then there was the whole ‘being able to make earthquakes happen’ thing.

Her impatience hadn’t gone anywhere, though. So after two days of Kora sulking around the Zephyr like someone had pissed in her freeze-dried Cheerios, without a single word to anyone or a hint about what could possibly be going on with her, Daisy was at the end of her rope.

They stopped for a refuel on an outer planet with a surface like shimmering sand, and that was when she couldn’t take it anymore.

She found her half-sister curled up in a chair in the cockpit, flipping through a book. Only she wasn’t really reading it, because her eyes weren’t moving and she was more glaring at the page than anything.

“Do you wanna like… talk about it?”

Kora didn’t even look at her. “Talk about what?”

“Whatever _this_ —” Daisy gestured vaguely at her sister’s brooding expression. “—all of this, whatever it is.”

“Nope,” Kora said simply. “I really, really don’t.”

And, well. Tenacity was the other thing that probably hadn’t changed much. Daisy swung around to sit in the chair opposite her, eyes widening with understanding and readying herself for a Coulson-worthy pep-talk.

“You know, whatever’s going on, I want you to know you can—”

The book in Kora’s hands slammed shut with a _snap_. “I said, I don’t want to talk.”

Daisy swallowed, a lump like a ball of tacks making its way down her throat and settling in her stomach. “Okay, then.”

She tried to forget about it while she went through her routine for the day, equipment checks and a video meeting with Mack to update him on their location, but it stuck with her. The angry look on Kora’s face, her staunch refusal to even try to open up. And Daisy might not have been an empath like May, but she didn’t need it to feel the sadness that had been emanating from her sister for the last few days.

For a few hours, she oscillated between being hurt and just plain pissed off.

She did what she was supposed to, right? 

It wasn’t like the comforting sister thing came easily to her. Everything about having an actual, blood-related family was uncharted territory and Daisy was floundering without a map or a landmark to follow. All she wanted to do was help, to make a connection, and Kora wasn’t having any part of it.

Well, if she didn’t want her help, then that was on her, Daisy decided as she charted coordinates for their next jump. Let her wallow all by herself if that was what she wanted. It wasn’t _her_ responsibility to hold Kora’s hand and walk her through every single one of her emotions.

“Easy, killer.” Daniel appeared at her side, his mouth curved into a smile. “You trying to poke right through the glass?”

Daisy grimaced, realizing how hard she’d been prodding at the screen. “It was getting mouthy.”

“Ah,” he chuckled. “I was looking for you a little while ago.”

“It’s a small ship. You couldn’t have looked that hard.” Bitchy even to her own ears, but Daisy was too busy being irritated to care.

Daniel, on the other hand, soldiered on as though he hadn’t caught her tone at all. He reached up to touch the screen in front of them, tapping one of the planets she’d just finished working out a flight path to.

“We’ve got a few issues cropping up here, here, and here,” he said, gesturing to the mountainous regions on the map. “I was thinking it’d be best if we started in this crater, here, before we go making a racket anywhere else…”

Daisy crossed her arms while he continued, irritation winding in her gut like a spool of thread. The more he talked, the tighter it wound until the tension was too much and her mouth opened ahead of her brain.

“Sousa,” she ground out. “Thanks, but I’ve got it.”

Daniel stopped his poking to furrow his brows at her. “I know, but I was just trying—”

“Well, stop!” The words erupted before Daisy could even attempt to put a lid on her temper, her heart pounding in her ears and her stomach clenched with adrenaline. “I don’t need your help, okay? I just don’t.”

She didn’t mean it for even a second, wanted to take it back as soon as she said it, but the blank look on Sousa’s face told her it didn’t matter. She’d already upset him.

“Daisy…” He reached for her and then seemed to think better of it, dropping his hand to tuck it in his pocket instead. “Alright. I’ll just… leave you to it, then.”

Holding it together until he was out of sight was a feat, but Daisy managed it. Just barely.

Then she slammed the button for the ramp release and stormed off the Zephyr, never more grateful that they were on solid ground. A refuel stop meant space to walk other than the crowded quarters they’d become accustomed to. It meant new planets, a new horizon to look at, and most importantly, a chance for Daisy to catch her damn breath.

The way station was near the edge of a cliff, carved into the side of a mountain that looked like purple and gold swirled marble. A pile of misshapen boulders lay nearby, and Daisy spent the next hour lifting and exploding them into pebbles until the anger drained from her muscles and all that remained was a hefty amount of guilt.

It was bound to happen sooner or later, she supposed. When the happy future she’d imagined came crashing down. First Kora didn’t want anything to do with her, and then Sousa, who didn’t deserve any of the attitude she’d given him, was going to come to his senses, too.

Daisy’s pity party lasted a solid fifteen more minutes before the footsteps came up behind her. She thought it might be one of the crew, telling her to hurry up before they fired up to head out for their next jump, but of course it wasn’t going to be that easy.

“It’s gorgeous out here,” Sousa said, settling beside her on the edge of the cliff. He’d become more than accustomed to his prosthetic, but bringing his knees up to rest his elbows on them still took extra effort.

She tipped her head back, staring up at the sky. “Mhm.”

“This whole mountain’s supposed to light up at sunset, something activated in the atmosphere.”

“Yep.”

Her refusal to engage in conversation lapsed them into a silence, one that stretched and twisted uncomfortably until Daisy couldn’t take it anymore.

“I’m sorry,” she blurted out.

Daniel looked in her direction, one eyebrow perked. “Sorry?”

She leaned back on her hands and inhaled deeply to swallow the rest of the pride she had left.

“I shouldn’t have snapped at you. It wasn’t about you, not really. I was just upset with Kora.” Sousa nodded, which she took as an invitation to continue. “She’s been acting so weird the last couple days, and I don’t know how to help her. She doesn’t even _want_ my help, which I guess is a family trait.”

Daniel chuckled. “I won’t argue with you on that one.”

“Uh-huh.” Daisy nudged him with her shoulder, a small smile on her lips before it disappeared again. “I don’t know how to relate to her. She loved Jiaying so much, but I didn’t have that experience with her. I mean, she tried to kill me.”

Out of everything in her past that she’d had to reconcile with, that one still held the sharpest sting. She’d gotten a peek at a Jiaying who could have been capable of loving her, but the reality was that she’d never had the mother that Kora did. The weight of alternate-timeline Jiaying’s death was never going to hurt as much for her as it did for the daughter who’d had a life with her, no matter how painful that life had been.

“She affected us both so much,” she continued. “In that like, forever kind of way. We’re both broken.”

“Broken in the same places, though,” Sousa said softly. “Maybe you just need to learn how to fit together.”

Daisy’s hands tightened on her knees as she rolled the idea around in her head. “I think she resents me.”

“Did you ask her?”

She shook her head. “She doesn’t want to talk to me.”

“I think you’d be surprised.” Daniel reached over to take her hand, sliding his fingers through hers. “She asked me to come out and check on you. She was worried about you.”

“And here I was thinking you’d come out all on your own.” Daisy threw a teasing lilt in her voice to blanket her shock, coaxing a quiet chuckle out of him.

“I’d have come regardless,” he told her, squeezing her hand as though dragging her back into the sincerity of the conversation. “But Kora cares about you, Daisy. It can’t be easy for her, learning how to have a family after so long without one.”

Abruptly, she was overcome with the urge to argue with that. Kora had Jiaying, and Afterlife, and a hell of a lot more than Daisy had ever had growing up. But even as the argument formed, she knew it was weak and mostly untrue. 

Imagining Kora stuck behind locked doors, fearing and hating herself and seeing it reflected back in the eyes of everyone she’d ever trusted, was enough to wash the thoughts away completely.

Sousa was right. Kora needed love and support, the kind she hadn’t truly been exposed to before, even with Jiaying. 

The love of a family.

“I think I know a little something about that,” she murmured.

He wrapped his arm around her shoulders, drawing her close to kiss the side of her head. “Thought you might.”

“I just don’t know how to get through to her. Where to even start with any of it.”

Sousa shrugged. “Sometimes all you can do is be there. I know you, Daisy, you don’t give up on the people you care about.”

Another damn thing he was right about. She just never thought the list would grow quite so long, or include long-lost siblings from a maybe-alternate timeline who had more insane superpowers than she did.

“You’re too damn observant,” she grumbled, resting her head against his shoulder. “It’s irritating.”

“I’ve heard that before.” Daisy couldn’t see the smile on his face, but she could hear it in his voice, and helped relax the rest of the tension in her body. “Are you ready to talk to your sister now?”

“I will,” Daisy promised. “But I think the sun’s going down, and I really want to see what this mountain looks like when it gets dark.”

Daniel chuckled into her hair, planting a kiss there as his arm tightened around her to keep her tucked against him. “Alright, then.”

They sat for a while while the star in the distance sunk into the horizon, the quiet acting as a balm while Daisy formed a course of action. Maybe Kora would tell her what was wrong or maybe she wouldn’t, but she could at least let her know that she was there. Whatever burden she was carrying, she didn’t have to do it alone.

It had taken her far too long to learn that lesson herself, and she wasn’t going to let her sister make the same mistake.

They were family, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! All of your comments and kudos are loved and cherished so much. If you'd like to see more of my nonsense, you can follow me on [tumblr](http://treaddelicately.tumblr.com).


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